Astro vs. Apache Airflow®

Explore the key differences between Astro and Airflow, along with a comprehensive comparison of their features.

Everything you love about Apache Airflow®, and so much more!

Astro augments Airflow with enterprise-grade features to enhance developer productivity, optimize operational efficiency at scale, meet production environment requirements, and more.

Click to View as PDF	Astro	Apache Airflow®
Elastic Infrastructure at Scale
High Availability Ensure the dependable delivery of mission-critical data pipelines with high availability schedulers.
Scale to 0 Deployments Schedule zero-cost downtime to optimize development deployment cost savings.
Task-Optimized Worker Queues Assign tasks to specific worker sets based on computational needs for optimized resource utilization.
Dynamic Workers Workers automatically scale up, and back down to zero, based on the needs of your workloads.
Astro API Enable programmatic interactions and provide schemas for updating infrastructure and managing access control.
Set-up and Teardown Tasks Manage task resources with setup tasks for preparation and teardown tasks for dismantling, regardless of task success.
Enhanced Developer Productivity
Astro CLI Run, parse, debug, and test DAGs on a local machine in a dedicated environment.
Cloud IDE Enable browser-based DAG writing, testing, and running while automating DAG generation to reduce boilerplate code.
Branch-Based Deploys Create isolated development environments for running, testing, and deploying your DAGs.
CI/CD Automate reliable code deployment, enforce reviews, promote code across environments, and ensure testing. Seamlessly integrated with your favorite CI/CD tools.		Limited
The Astronomer Registry Easily explore and use supported providers, modules, example DAGs, and tools within the Airflow ecosystem.
Increased Operational Efficiency
Advanced Connection Management Streamline Airflow connections setup in a centralized location with a built-in, native solution provided by a secrets backend.
Deployment Rollbacks Easily revert your Airflow deployments to any previous code deployment, allowing you to quickly undo any problematic changes made to your deployment.
Multi-Tenant Airflow Empower teams to efficiently manage their own isolated Airflow environments, maximizing resource utilization and operational efficiency.
In-Place Airflow Upgrades Upgrade Airflow while preserving DAGs, configurations, and data to minimize downtime and data loss risks.
Upgrade Utilities Proactively identify and address common pitfalls and issues post-upgrade.
Cosmos Execute dbt Core within Airflow, transforming projects into Task Groups or complete DAGs.
Datasets Create explicit data dependencies, enable data-aware scheduling, and simplify cross-DAG interactions.
Visibility and Reporting
Cross Deployment Visibility + Health Gain complete visibility of your DAGs and metadata across all of your Airflow deployments.
Data-Centric Alerting Configure alerts based on DAG run and task states, receiving real-time notifications for proactive monitoring.
Lineage Visualize task relationships and track data movement within workflows, including data movement in external systems.		Limited
Organizational Dashboards Gain comprehensive insights into your Astro usage, SLAs, deployments, and operations across your organization.
Robust Enterprise-Grade Security
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) Implement granular and customized role-based access control across workspaces, teams, and deployment.		Limited
Multi-Tenancy Collaborate within isolated spaces by utilizing workspaces and deployments for your DAGs.
Private Networking Establish secure connections by VPC peering directly with your private networks.
Compliance Readiness Meet SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS security standards compliance.
Secrets Management Automate secret management across Airflow deployments, ensuring a unified interface for seamless handling of secrets.
Encryption Automatically encrypts all data, both at rest and in transit, including databases, file systems, and network transmissions.
Committer-led Support
24x7x365 Support Access to the world's leading Airflow experts and committers.
Professional Services Customize hands-on engagements to achieve your goals.
Education, Enablement, and Certification Build Airflow expertise across your organization with diverse training and certification options.
	Get Started

10x the performance with Astro,
0 hassles

Astro provides a fully-managed solution that offers all the benefits of Airflow without the headache of managing it.

438%
return on investment in less than 6 months

Speed up time-to-value and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) with an expansive suite of capabilities that boosts developer productivity. With consumption-based pricing, pay only for monthly consumed infrastructure resources.

75%
reduction in infrastructure management

Automate Airflow management and streamline operations with an elastic, scalable, and always-available Airflow-as-a-Service, eliminating operational burdens and enabling your team to focus on the most critical projects.

1500+
validated integrations for limitless extensibility

Achieve seamless interoperability across teams, applications, and environments to provide the end-to-end data management required for your modern data stack.

5 minutes
to get started, Airflow experience not required

Start building data pipelines in less than 5 minutes with developer-friendly tools, intuitive UI, and complete local developer experience.

Start building today

We no longer spend huge chunks of time fixing outages. Our engineering teams can focus on product engineering, and our analytic engineers and data scientists can focus on getting stakeholders the analytics they need.

Nick Wilson

Senior Manager, Platform Team, Autodesk

Using Astro's Apache Airflow® offering on Azure has modernized our data operations. Their best-in-class SLAs, multi-environment deployments, and intuitive dashboards have streamlined our processes, ensuring we can manage our critical pipelines.

Kevin Schmidt

Sr Manager, Data Engineering, Molson Coors Beverage Company